We’re especially curious about your research into the connections between psilocybin, spirituality, and consciousness. Can you tell us more? Are there any updates?

In ongoing studies, we’re examining the effects of psilocybin in long-term meditators and in ​religious leaders from the major faith traditions. We’re also conducting two anonymous internet surveys. One is asking about experiences that some people report of an encounter with God, or the God of their understanding.

Another is examining anomalous experiences, such as Near Death Experiences, that produce enduring changes in people’s attitudes and beliefs about death and dying. In both surveys, we want to compare spontaneously occurring experiences with psychedelically occasioned ones. Our hope is that these surveys will allow us to better understand such experiences and how they may differ across faith traditions and occasioning events (e.g. prayer, meditation, spontaneously-occurring, nature experiences, drug-occasioned, etc.). Our research has shown that a single experience with psilocybin can produce personally meaningful experiences accompanied by enduring positive changes in attitudes, mood and behavior.

Finally, we’re initiating a study to explore the efficacy of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. (continued below)

In several of our studies we are using fMRI brain imaging methods to examine the acute and persisting changes in brain function that occur after receiving psilocybin.Read the full Griffiths interview.

The Default Mode Network & End of Suffering: Experienced meditator Gary Weber talks about the effects of meditation, psilocybin, ayahuasca, on connectivity of the default mode network area of the brain and the cingulate cortex, areas responsible for the sense of self.

When will thought leaders wake up and allow archaic means of resilience like meditation and psychotherapy with hallucinogens become a part of American culture?

Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine. Click for link.

Mental health preventative medicine like meditation and psychotherapy with hallucinogens are greatly needed to fight the preventable death epidemic caused by unreliable means of resilience built into our culture.
​Having few outlets to alleviate day-to-day mental distress drives people to self-medicate beyond moderation with addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs.

A recent study from the journal Pain titledIncreasing placebo responses over time in U.S. clinical trials of neuropathic pain
​examined 84 clinical trials between 1990 and 2013 and found that the patient response to placebo rose over the years.Difference in patient response to placebo versus drug changed from 27% in 1996 to 9% in 2013. Interestingly, the increase in placebo effect was due completely to the 35 studies in the United States. Placebo effect in trials outside the United States did not increase.

​Scientific American states: "Drug companies have a problem: they are finding it ever harder to get painkillers through clinical trials. But this isn’t necessarily because the drugs are getting worse.

An extensive analysis of trial data has found that responses to sham treatments have become stronger over time, making it harder to prove a drug’s advantage over placebo.'We were absolutely floored when we found out,' says Jeffrey Mogil, who directs the pain-genetics lab at McGill University in Montreal and led the analysis. Simply being in a US trial and receiving sham treatment now seems to relieve pain almost as effectively as many promising new drugs. Mogil thinks that as US trials get longer, larger and more expensive, they may be enhancing participants’ expectations of their effectiveness.

​Stronger placebo responses have already been reported for trials of antidepressants and antipsychotics, triggering debate over whether growing placebo effects are seen in pain trials too."

Authors of the research note the importance of investigating why the United States is different than other countries regarding placebo effect. According to McGill University, reasons may include "the existence of direct-to-consumer drug advertising in the U.S. (New Zealand is the only other country in the world that allows this), the greater spread of for-profit “contract research organizations” in the U.S., and perhaps greater exposure to the placebo concept in popular media in the U.S."

Scientific American / Nature quoted Ted Kaptchuk, director of placebo research at Harvard Medical School in Boston: “If the major component of a drug in any particular condition is its placebo component, we need to develop non-pharmacological interventions as a first-line response."

​Will development and implementation of non-pharm and archaic interventions for mental health conditions such as centralized pain and mental disorders be possible in a society that is driven by prescriptions?

​Personality change and placebo effect

Roland Griffiths, JHU, Click for link.

Could meditation and/or classic hallucinogens (psychedelics) improve the response to placebo that is so crucial in mental health? In a landmark study led by Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University, "A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called “magic mushrooms,” was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants. ​
​

​The Johns Hopkins study was especially noteworthy due to the fact that personality usually doesn't change significantly after age 30. If a single dose of psilocybin significantly increases openness that lasts over a year, could other personality traits be influenced with additional sessions?

Imagine if Americans were taught meditation and given neurofeedback therapists from an early age when circuitry isn't as rigid. It would create mental health jobs and be a great investment for society. For those who are older, it might take an event to the brain or spiritual and/or mystical experience to change personality and outlook on life.

​The only way to find out if psilocybin or ayahuasca can influence placebo effect or provide benefit in treating mental illness, depression, or somatic disorders is to do the research.

According to Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., past president of the American Psychiatric Association, "We have had a nearly 50-year hiatus in any serious investigation, except for some heroic investigators at a few universities."

"We Need to Study These Drugs."

"My point is not to say that these drugs should be discounted and relegated to the criticism and dismissal similar to that of treatments for which we have no basis for claims of therapeutic efficacy.These psychedelic drugs clearly are pharmacologically active, have profound effects, could be useful for therapeutic purposes, and need to be studied in an intensive and extensive way before an informed determination can be made.
​

If not, we will find ourselves in a situation that may resemble what we are seeing with marijuana, with its increasing legalization despite having an inadequate knowledge base, because of social and political pressure.
​

​​​​"LSD was a very important experience to have." –Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D.Past President of American Psychiatric Association Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University
Psychiatrist-in-Chief at NY Presbyterian Hospital
Director of the NY State Psychiatric Institute

​I believe that the scientific investigation of mind-altering psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and '70s was a truncated but promising avenue of research, and that these medications, these drugs, could have significant value for a variety of indications if studied adequately."

“Meditation has been studied for decades, but we wanted to know if it was really better than the placebo effect." So he and a team of researchers reviewed 47 meditation studies, involving 3,515 volunteers, most of whom were not suffering from clinical depression or clinical anxiety.

Their conclusion: “Meditation appeared to provide as much relief from some depression symptoms as other studies have found with antidepressants,” Goyal says. Volunteers who took an eight-week meditation course experienced a 10 percent to 20 percent improvement in depression symptoms and a 5 percent to 10 percent improvement in anxiety symptoms. Meditation also showed similar promise to reduce pain."
Patients with subclinical mental illness should not be subjected to medications that carry risk of side effects. However, if subclinical mental illness is not helped in some way, it could progress to more serious mental distress or self-medication with harmful prescription drugs or alcohol. This is an area where psychedelic psychotherapy and meditation could help. ​

​Marginally effective pharmaceutical therapies for depression and anxiety are simply not worth the risk vs. reward in patients with subclinical depression or existential anxiety. Harm is especially important when considering treatment for older adults, a population that is increasing with aging baby boomers.

U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs Evidence Map of Mindfulness/Meditation. Click for link.

Click for link.

​Meditation for Pain

Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., of Wake Forest showed that meditation is significantly more effective than sham at the 2014 NIH Pain Consortium Symposium (Zeidan's video presentation below), earning him the Mitchell Max Award for research excellence. ​Pain specialist Mitchell B. Max tragically died by suicide in2009 at age 59. 400 Doctors Die By Suicide Every Year.
Why Have Suicide Rates Not Decreased?This begs the question: Is meditation, an inexpensive non-drug therapy that is minimally difficult to learn, being aggressively researched across the United States for pain and mood regulation?

Lack of reimbursement results in behavioral health professionals moving only to larger cities that have wealthier patients. Non-drug mental health and substance abuse care become ​unavailable to patients who need it the most (i.e. children, low
​income, substance-dependent, and those where non-drug therapies are first-line)

Also from the CDC (Notice antidepressants and benzodiazepines 2nd on the list behind opioid analgesics):

Source: CDC. Click image to access link.

Source: CDC. Click image to access link.

Opioid Overdose and the National Cancer Institute Hasten Prohibition's Last Dance with Mary Jane. Click for link.

The draft CDC pain guidelines state, “Non-pharmacologic therapy including exercise therapy and CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) should be used to reduce pain and improve function in patients with chronic pain. If pharmacologic therapy is needed, non-pharmacologic therapy should be used in combination with non-opioid pharmacologic therapy to reduce pain and improve function.”

The pain organizations called this an extreme position in their letter to the CDC. Opposition statement:

“It is CDC’s singular focus on prescription opioid diversion, abuse, addiction, and overdose over any improved understanding of chronic pain incidence, prevalence, trends, and optimal interventions that reveals within CDC an extreme imbalance in its own risk-benefit sensibilities when it comes to this class of medications,” the letter says. “FDA requires safety and efficacy trials that all approved opioid medications have met. Detailed prescribing instructions are developed based on proven studies. Yet the new guidelines ignore the FDA’s prescribing expertise, recommending different maximum daily doses that appear in no guidelines or package inserts.”

The FDA appears to have played little -- if any -- role in developing the guidelines with the CDC, even though both agencies are in the Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Secretary Sylvia Burwell. An FDA spokesman would only say that the agency “did have an opportunity to comment on the current version” of the guidelines.

“I would ask you to consider what Secretary Burwell's role is in allowing such divisiveness between CDC and FDA. Shouldn't Burwell be trying to have the federal government have a united front on opioids?” asked David Becker, a social worker and patient advocate.

“It seems to me there is a lack of leadership from the Obama administration on opioids. In addition, they can’t seem to deal with the politics of pain care -- they are not bringing parties together to settle their differences. On the contrary they seem to encourage factionalism and convulsing society. Individuals in pain are merely pawns in the chess game of pain -- with little power and say over their care.”

For the past two decades, Congress has neglected mental health while gladly allowing researchers and healthcare professionals fight over the funds allotted for mental health, substance abuse, and pain care. Where is the leadership?

​Now is a tremendously important time for mental health, given the levels of opioid addiction without proper treatment, the number of mentally ill patients in prison rather than receiving adequate care, and the number of mass shootings in America (Guns and the NRA are also to blame). Are you seeing change in your community?

Mental Health Failures
​Americans do not have time for conflicts between psychiatry, psychology, anti-psychiatry, the FDA, and severe mental illness vs. non-severe mental illness. Psychiatry and psychology are left to fight over the relatively paltry funding that is allotted to our mental well-being, while those with severe mental illness are put in prison or left homeless. There is a complete lack of leadership and vision for the future of mental health, substance abuse, and pain care in the United States. The DEA only knows handcuffs. The FDA is weak and too easily swayed by pharmaceutical industry. NIMH has more to do with research than it does with implementation. NIDA keeps fearful parents properly warned about teenage drug harms.

It's time for real change and real leadership. Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies cannot be trusted to dictate policy on mental health.

There needs to be a single government payer for everything related to mental health and pain. It would result in better research of all types of therapies and limit patient stress that comes with not knowing if certain therapies will be covered or even work in the first place. This type of single payer system already exists in the VA System. What about the rest of the country?

More on Transcendental Meditation:"Self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs is not a rarity among veterans returning from war. According to the VA’s National Center for PTSD, more than 20 percent of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) abuse such substances. For Jensen, the destructive forces of substance abuse culminated the day he put a gun to his head in front of his wife and two young children."

“There’s a reason there’s 10 different types of depression medication, because what works for you might not work for the next guy,” Jensenexplained to DAV.org. Through nearly half a year of treatment, Jensen was prescribed five different kinds of depression medication, three types of anxiety medication and two different sleeping aids. But none of it provided the relief he was hoping for. “Everybody’s different. You need to find the right fit for you, and in order to do that you need to try new things.” “There are other methodologies besides medications and expensive treatments that they can do themselves and have for the rest of their lives without spending a lot of time and money,” Yellin stated. “Learning TM is a one-time fee for a lifetime of help.”

​GOP presidential candidates treat drug policy reform as if were a pot joke while thousands of families have been ruined by draconian laws that are not based on science. Cannabis is effective in treating pain, but it's been illegal for the past 50 years. Instead, the FDA condoned the use of Oxycontin in the 1990s to treat all types of pain.

Read Carly Fiorina's story about her daughter’s struggles with alcohol, prescription pills and bulimia that led to her death at age 35: “Lori’s potential was never fulfilled but death is not the only thing that crushes potential… What I also know is that Americans are failing to achieve their potential today.”

Watch this excellent continuing education course on prescription opioids. Pharmacist Pete Kreckel also shares what he has learned about pain management from his travels to different parts of the world. Here are a few facts that stand out:

Americans consume 80% of the global opioid supply, 99% of the world's hydrocodone supply, and 66% of the world's illegal drugs

2% of painkiller prescriptions are for methadone, yet it causes 30% of prescription painkiller deaths

Women aged 45 to 54 have the highest risk of dying from a prescription painkiller overdose

400% increase in overdoses among women from 1999 to 2010 (256% among men)

Euphoria of specific opioids drives street value; Hydromorphone has the highest, methadone has the lowest

NALOXONE can reverse an opioid overdose. It saves lives and may be available over the counter where you live. If you have a loved one who uses opioid analgesics, ask your pharmacist or doctor about it